Controlling the cost of colour printing

Colour printing is a necessity for many modern businesses. It can help to add impact to financial reports, or bring an added air of professionalism to sales pitches.

But colour printing costs. In many cases, the per-page cost of colour output can be several times that of mono pages. So it's vital, as a business expands, that the cost of colour to run away with it. Colour can make all the difference when it comes to customer-facing documents - but if employees are printing out their emails in colour, the business could effectively be pouring money down the drain.

By introducing centralised printer fleet management across its network of printers and multifunction products (MFPs), a business can track which staff use colour, and for what jobs.

Management software can also be used to control access to the colour features of the firm's printer fleet - enabling it to, say, restrict colour printing to certain members of staff from certain applications

Sophisticated reporting tools not only enable businesses to identify and eliminate abuse of colour printing infrastructure, but also let them see where their true colour costs lie.

This enables costs to be apportioned more accurately between departments, simplifying internal billing - and enabling them, if necessary, to ask users or departmerns to reduce their colout usage. Alerts can be sounded when specified thresholds are met, enabling managers to see when someone is printing more colour than they should.